Where Eagles Dare
by natural numbers
Summary: Some people have a sixth sense. She had a sixth, a seventh, and an eighth.


**Author's Note: **Greetings to all lost souls that somehow ended up here. Glad you made it here and are now reading my unneccessary preface that I only put in because I have the urgent need to talk about bullshit. This is a little idea that I came up with a few years back when I first started to watch Marvel movies. And since I wanted to improve my language skills or whatever you wanna call it (English is _not_ my first language, so please exuse a) weird words and phrases and b) longer hiatuses in between chapters because _hell_ is it hard to write when you have to re-think every other sentence) I thought I might as well publish what my slow working brain comes up with, just in case you guys like to read another OC fic.

This story will _possibly_ end up having a pairing (maybe a Peter/OC **although** I haven't yet settled on anything in perticular, so don't get your hopes up too high people) and follow the events of the movies. Disclaimer, but in short: I don't own anything but my OC; Marvel, Stan Lee and so on and so forth, _ad nauseam_, you know the drill. I'll take the liberty to change up the canon to fit my narration and cope with ... certain things that, well, _happened_.

Anyways, I hope you like what you're gonna read – leave a review and tell me what you think about the story so far and** please **feel free to correct any mistakes you find (would be really nice, since, well I'm not a native speaker and all). Oh and by the way: Rated T for now, but may change later. We'll see.

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**CHAPTER ONE**

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**2007**

He took a pull on his cigarette.

Inhaled as deep as he could and then let the light smoke escape his mouth with a snort. He silently watched it swirl through the air, taking another deep breath, before it disappeared into the stinging cold of early November.

Rumlow growled. He had always hated Russia.

October was barely over, but it had already been storming for days and days on end. Hail rather than snow slammed down on his face, left stinging red stains on his on his probably already blue skin; cold water ran down his neck into the tight collar of his jacket and down his shivering spine. He took another pull on his cigarette, filled his lungs with the pleasantly warm smoke and closed his eyes in an attempt to keep himself from screaming. If he had to spend another _single_ day in this freezing cold he would strangle von Strucker with his bare hands.

"Investigate, monitor, report", von Strucker had ordered, not particularly invested in the situation as it seemed, turning a page in his book without looking at the man in front of him. "Once you are certain you found the target, report to List; he will give you any further instructions."

The task had been fairly easy, nothing he couldn't do – but most certainly something he shouldn't be _supposed_ to do. Given, he would not have entrusted some rookie with the mission either, since Strucker (or more likely his personal henchman List) seemed to lay all his hopes into whatever he thought to have unraveled _this_ time, but if you were to ask him, Rumlow was significantly overqualified for being some sort of fetch and carry – he was a trained fighter, not some errand boy sucking up to his incompetent superiors. And, even though he had had to clench his teeth in stifled anger at Strucker's dismissive tone, he was now _here_; leaning onto a vending machine outside one of the many run-down stores in some outer district of Novosibirsk, his eyes already stiff from staring at the grey prefab building across the street for what must have been hours.

He let out a silent grunt, grinding the stub of his – as he had realized, displeased – last cigarette under his heel into the dirty, silently scrunching snow. Just as he was about to get himself another pack of cigarettes out of the (by now probably empty) automat, the door of the prefab was pulled open with a loud screech. Out hurried a woman in her late thirties; she was pretty, he assumed, but not even her delicate features could hide the dark eye bags and her worn out expression. A bunch of children (four boys and three girls) thronged around her like a swarm of bees, all seven of them giggling and laughing and whining. Rumlow watched her pull on her cigarette with a shivery breath before hurrying down the street, not paying all too much attention to the children that followed after her; one girl on each side, while the older boys in the back tossed around a bright red cap in some silly game.

Rumlow's eyes, however, narrowed on the last girl, jumping up and down between who he assumed were her brothers of some kind, in the piteous attempt to get her little hat back. She was small, even smaller than the other kids; if he had to guess, he would say she was four, maybe five years old at most, with her ruffled, blonde bowl cut, wrapped in a jacket she might as well have fit in twice. Her exasperated cries echoed through the street: "_Eto moya shapka, Kostya!_"

He let out a silent snort. It was funny, really, how this little girl was supposed to be what List had declared "the most sensational discovery of the century" or, more likely, what Rumlow liked to call the doctor's "groundbreaking phenomenon of the month". The dear doctor had a way of discovering new sensations every other week – be it a new chemical or some not yet recorded protein or something else Rumlow couldn't care less about – but most of them turned out to be less spectacular than the man made them out to be. Although _this time_, Rumlow thought as he pushed himself off the wall he had been leaning against to follow the girl down the street, List may have actually found his eighth Wonder of the World. The people in town, at the very least, weren't afraid of a devil roaming the streets for nothing, now were they?

Rumlow passed a kiosk, vaguely glancing at the headline of the laid out pile of newspapers. His russian wasn't the best, but it was enough to make out a few words. ›_Storm demolishes school_‹ it stated in bold letters and he snorted at the ignorance behind that small sentence. People really did believe what they wanted to believe.

He shook his head, turned around the corner– and cursed under his breath. People downright poured out of the wide alleyway, coming from a market down the street and Rumlow gritted his teeth in aggravation; the girl was nowhere to be seen. He pushed past the people, ignoring their annoyed exclamations as he barged into them without any regard. He fobbed off some hustler that tried to sell him his fish, his eyes darting through the alley, looking for the child.

_Finally_, he made out the face of the woman somewhere near a stand that sold all sorts of vegetables. Rumlow hurried to stand beside her, pretending to look at a bundle of carrots, throwing unobtrusive glances towards the children at her side. _Two. Three. Four_– Rumlow looked around and a low growl arose in his throat; the goddamn child was missing. He almost threw the carrots back onto the bunch, pushed past the woman and roughly grabbed one of the two left over boys, dragging him out of range before he could cry out to his mother. The boy stared at him with wide eyes and then started to fight against his tight grip. Rumlow scowled at him.

"_Otpustite menya!_"

Rumlow pressed his hand onto the kid's moth before he could alert the whole street of their little get together. His voice was nothing more than a muffled sound behind the fabric of his glove; he could feel the boy's warm breath on his palm but ignored the protest. "_Gde tvoya sestra?_", Rumlow asked in the best russian he could offer, his accent heavy on his tongue.

"_Otkuda ya znayu?_", the boy replied once he had lifted his hand, yanking his arm free and stumbling back under the amount of force he had used. He sniffled, got up and ran off, slipping right through Rumlow's grasp, and was gone before he could catch him again. Rumlow growled in frustration, brushed off the snow on his knees and turned around to look for one of the other kids, when the sudden sound of shattering glass exploded in the street, and with it a bestial scream that almost shattered his eardrums. His instincts made him throw himself on the ground; his arms shielding his head as a sudden blast of air ripped through the alley. Something, a brick maybe, or a stone, hit the back of his head; blackness crawled into his vision.

Screams; people screaming; crying. Ringing, from somewhere. A screechy ringing, in his ear. He blinked, trying to orientate himself.

The taste of vomit filled his mouth, forced even more bile up his already sore throat. A muffled groan escaped his lips as he looked up, his pounding head spinning, his ear ringing. The windows to his right had burst, he noticed, and the wooden frames had been ripped out of the brick walls; unconsciously, he reached for the aching spot on the back of his head; it hurt, but it didn't bleed. He fought back another groan and clenched his teeth. _Goddammit. _Glass scrunched under his heels as he got off the ground and looked around, slowly, still dizzy, while his brain tried to process what the hell was going on.

The street looked like a battle field. People were lying on the floor; shaking; sobbing; crying. Something had teared the stands down. The wind, he remembered, the sudden gust of wind; but it hadn't only blown them over; the tarps were downright shred apart; torn to pieces as if claws had ripped right through them. He tore his gaze off a woman buried beneath one of the metal scaffolds, staring at the ground with wide, dead eyes. Somewhere behind him the alarm of a car reached his good ear and almost drowned out the quiet sobs coming out of the demolished building: "_Kostya?_"

He made his way through the alley, around people still crouching on the floor and those who had managed to pull themselves up on their feet, until he found an entrance; the door had been ripped out of the hinges and Rumlow stepped in to find the place completely havocked. Whoever had lived here wasn't going to anymore; the floor was covered in glass and splinters of what he supposed had been a table and some chairs once, and whatever was left of the furniture was now broken, shredded, even. A part of the ceiling was missing, and a wall must have come down with it. He stepped over the heap of bricks and wood and followed the silent weeping to the corner of the room.

Rumlow found the girl kneeling on the ground behind a fallen-over couch, sobbing to herself as she tried to pull the limp body of a boy out from underneath it with all of her force. The boy's clothes were nothing more than rags, hanging loosely on his thin shoulders. His face was covered in deep cuts, his blood-stained skin ripped open as if an animal had savaged him; Rumlow stared in mild shock at the raw, bright red flesh underneath it. In his fading daze, Rumlow almost didn't recognize the kid that had taken the girl's cap away earlier. "_Kostya? Davay, vstavay_", the girl cried out, pleading, trying to get her brother to move, even though the boy was very clearly dead. "_Eto uzhe ne smeshno, Kostya. Vstavay, pozhaluysta!_" Good luck getting a corpse up on its feet, he thought, coming to stand behind her, and cocked an eyebrow at the helpless little thing. _How sad._

The kid must have heard him coming. She turned around, so fast that he was left surprised at how she didn't break her neck, and for a second, Rumlow could have sworn her grayish blue eyes were glowing; a bright and rich orange that had faintly illuminated her pale cheeks but was now gone. He shook off the odd feeling that had crawled up his spine and knelt down beside her. She backed away, but Rumlow caught her by her shoulder before she could get up and try to run away.

"_Kostya ne dvigayetsya_", she almost choked on her constant sobbing, tears and snot running down her face. Rumlow scrunched his nose in disgust. "_On ne vstayet. Ya yego sprosila, nu on ne vstayet!_"

"That's because he's dead", Rumlow answered bluntly, whatever was left of his sentiment numbed by the cold creeping through the broken windows into his sleeves and the pesky buzzing in his ear that had slowly but steadily started to grow into a headache. The girl, however, only stared at him, her puffy eyes wide with fear and hurt, and he wondered if she gaped at him because she she didn't understand what he'd said, or because she indeed did. No matter what it was – her expression soon melted into anger, subtle, but still evident on her tiny face, and as she glared at him he couldn't help but feel unsettled by something he couldn't quite grasp.

Just a hunch, nothing more, but it was enough to make his flesh creep and his hair stand on end; alarmed, ready to fight whoever had managed to sneak up on him, he looked over his shoulder to find nothing – or rather no one – but the wrecked room and gaping emptiness in between the thrashed furniture. Rumlow huffed, but failed to fight the sudden shiver that ran down his spine; the feeling seemed familiar, he realized. His instincts had him on edge ever since he had suspected the girl to be the Doc's newest scientific discovery. He had monitored her, following his instructions despite the grudge he bore against von Strucker for sending him here in the first place, and yet, Rumlow had been the one feeling as if someone had been watching him.

He glanced back at the girl in mild suspicion and saw her staring at her brother's pale corpse, seemingly oblivious to his presence, and – much to his surprise – with a faint, orange glow in her tear-dimmed eyes. _Huh_, he thought. Maybe the kid had something more to her than just the tendency to rip buildings apart.

"_Poydem so mnoy_", he said and as she turned her head to look at him, not sobbing anymore but sniffing quietly, Rumlow put on the best smile he could offer. It wasn't the most convincing smile (probably sickly sweet and painfully forced), he knew that much, but he supposed it would be just enough to fool some little kid, "_Ya znayu kogo to, kto mozhet pomog tvoyemu bratu._"

She eyed him with more suspicion than he had expected to come from a five-year-old, but she eventually took his offered hand and let him pull her onto her feet. Rumlow smiled at her. "_Poydem, milaya_", he repeated, picking her up; she struggled in his tight grip, but was about as helpless a turtle lying on its back, and gave in when he roughly pinched her cheek and reassured her in the most friendly tone he managed: "_Ne volnuysya, ya pomogu tebya._"

He carried her out of the room and left the building though the back door. It had started to snow again. Rumlow hurried through the cold, taking dark alleys and narrow backstreets to avoid being seen by any pedestrians until he reached the rundown parking lot conveniently hidden behind some prefab buildings and a far more attractive store front on the other side of the road. With numb fingers he reached for the car keys in his pocket and a second later the doors to a shabby VW Polo clicked open. Rumlow threw the girl onto the passenger seat, took a pack of cigarettes out of the glove locker and yanked the door shut with a loud thud.

He lightened his cigarette, pulled out his phone and dialed the one number in his contacts. It rang three times, before List answered his call with an all-too-eager sounding voice.


End file.
